below: After the rain the leaves lie stuck to the path and tangled up in the grass.

below: Or stuck in the fence

below: You can’t escape the cranes…..

below: … or the hoardings.

below: Magnus and Angel are missing…. Is this a coincidence?

below: Pink flowers and a purple door.

below: Built in 1892, this building was once the Church of the Messiah Rectory. The church is the next building to the right (with the slightly yellow stones)

below: Faded flower of a different kind

below: Building behind the Rosedale Diner, as seen from Crown Lane

below: Locked door

below: Graffiti on private property.

below: The limestone Summerhill LCBO store which was originally the North Toronto Canadian Pacific train station. The clock tower is 43m high.

below: From a different angle, the station when it was first built in 1916. The tracks are still there but only freight trains pass by these days. It only lasted as a passenger station until September 1930. Back in the day if you wanted to take a train to Lindsay or Bobcaygeon, this is where you’d go although you could also get a train to Ottawa (via Peterborough & Smith’s Falls) or Montreal.

below: No stop ahead

below: “Help negro and white people mass (?) produce painted stones and hide them” plus a lot of other lines and shapes that might be letters or words.

below: I also came across this box yesterday – Sam the Chinese Food Man and other signs.

below: I have vague memories of such a Sam’s restaurant so I went online to find out more about it. What I found is this image in a “Lost Toronto” blogpost. It is Yonge Street just south of Gerrard (the Rio Theatre was 373 Yonge Street). Did you know that Toronto once had a wax museum?

The Gardens of St. Clair is a mural project in an alley behind St. Clair West between Prescott and Blackthorn Avenues, just west of the railway tracks. There are lots of roses and other flowers as well as butterflies and birds.

below: A purple pansy and a luminescent insect with a shiny blue body. The dark green vine motif runs throughout the project.

ZimSculpt is the name of the exhibit now on at Edwards Gardens. Placed around the gardens are a large number of stone sculptures by Zimbabwean artists. There are also small pieces on display inside a tent-like structure near the parking lot. All items are for sale along with some baskets and jewellery. Here are some of the sculptures:

below: Giving Advice by Boet Nyariri, carved in springstone

below: (after the garden was watered!), Mother and Son, by Joe Mutasa, carved in springstone.

The summer of the heat continues into August. It’s still hot and humid. But it was also the long August weekend, Simcoe Day or something like that, so there was lots happening around the city.

I went searching for breezes and I walked on the shady side of the street as much as possible, often as the drops of sweat ran down my back. A few stops in air conditioned stores (indoor window shopping) and a cold drink break or two made the days bearable. It helped that, as usual, there was lots to see!

below: Be curious … and stay curious.

below: Jumping skate boarders at Dundas and Bathurst

below: Casimir Street mural on Dundas (near Bathurst)

below: Sitting by the pool

below: A shady spot for reading.

below: A front yard full of tall yellow flowers

below: Not everyone has a green thumb. A rose is still a rose even in death.

below: Sitting in the painted window, Graffiti Alley. It looked like they were filming a music video. I’m not too sure what they thought of me (I didn’t think that I was disturbing them, long lens used).

below: A quiet spot for a cigarette.

below: Red hot.

below: An old mattress and head board lean against the side of a house. Great juxtaposition here as the mural is called ‘Lust’

below: Jelly window on Queen West – What is a modern doughnut? Especially one spelled the old fashioned way? The store was closed, so it’s still a mystery. Beautiful painting on the door.

below: Cycling in the jungle. I say ‘jungle’ because I see the lion and think “King of the jungle” but lions don’t live in the jungle so maybe I need to rethink that caption. Cyclist as prey? Bikes on safari?

below: Prince is now at Kensington Market. A purple Prince.

below: Graffiti in Kensington. Frowning while watching them fight. Little black figures with rifles. Are they angels that are shooting back or devils?

below: Reflections and lots of stuff including the painted lady in the House of Energy, Augusta Avenue. Life.

below: Death. How many skulls in the window?

below: Lots of smiles

I’ll be smiling more once the temperatures cool. I think that it’s been hot long enough that I can complain about it – perhaps even long for winter? How Canadian of me! In the meantime, as long as there is shade I’ll keep walking (and sweating!).

A trip to Toronto Islands on a sunny spring day.
Photos and stories – an eclectic mix of history and nature that resulted from wandering around the eastern portion of the islands.

below: From the ferry, looking toward the glass and steel of the city.

Toronto Islands is a collection of at least 12 small islands. In the early years the island archipelago was really a peninsula of sandbars and ponds; it was connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of sandy shoreline. This landform was created over centuries by the action of waves, winds and lake currents – washing away portions of the Scarborough Bluffs and depositing this material to the west in a five-mile-long hooked shape. This process of natural “landscaping” continued until the spring of 1858, when a particularly powerful hurricane created a channel four to five feet deep through the peninsula. By June of that year, the Eastern Gap was a waterway, and the Toronto Islands came into being.

below: On the ferry between the city and Centre Island.

The first buildings on the islands were the Blockhouse Bay garrison built in the 1794 by the British at Gibraltar Point – it included a blockhouse and storage structures. A second blockhouse and a guard house were built soon after, only to be destroyed by the Americans in the Battle of York in April 1813. The lighthouse at Gibraltar Point built in 1809 still stands (sorry, no photo).

In 1833 Michael O’Connor built a hotel on one the islands. He used a horse-drawn boat to ferry customers across from the mainland to his hotel. At that time, there was still access by road but it was a toll road. In 1836 it cost sixpence for every four-wheeled carriage drawn by two horses. Smaller ‘vehicles’ paid less. In 1858 the hotel (now Quinns Hotel) was destroyed during the same hurricane that turned the peninsula into an island. The hotels were destroyed but the islands remained popular. With no road access, ferries were needed and many people ran private ferry services until they were bought out or amalgamated into the Toronto Ferry Company in 1892. It was privately owned until 1926 when it was purchased by the City of Toronto for $337,500.

Many houses and businesses, (hotels, restaurants, bowling alley, laundry, theatre etc) were established over the years from Hanlon’s Point in the west to Wards Island in the east. Today, residences are only in the eastern section of Wards Island and on Algonquin Island.

The Ward’s Island community began in the 1880s as a settlement of tents. Up until then, that eastern end of the islands was mostly wetlands. The first summer colony on Ward’s in 1899 consisted of just eight tenants, each of whom had paid a fee of $10 rent for the season. The number of tents grew each year. In 1913, the city felt it necessary to organize the community into streets. The evolution from tents to cottage structures progressed in stages with the building of floors, the addition of kitchens and then porches, resulting in the creation of the homes.

In 1953 the municipal government changed their policy toward the Toronto Islands landscape and its residents. Businesses were removed and the systematic demolition and burning of homes began. More of the islands became parkland. There are 262 houses on Wards and Algonquin Islands today, down from about 630 residences on all the islands. The last of the Lakeshore houses was removed in 1968 but traces of them still remain.

below: The pier on the Lake Ontario side.

below: Sandbags along the shore. Last spring there was a lot of flooding here and the island was closed to visitors – sort of. Ferries didn’t run and the park facilities were closed. The islands are very flat and low so it doesn’t take much extra water to flood.

below: There is a small amusement park, Centreville, on Centre Island.

below: Island transport that can be rented if you don’t want to walk.

below: Boats moored QCYC (Queen City Yacht Club), one of the three yacht clubs on the islands.

below: Sakura trees in bloom. The trees were donated by the Sakura Project. The aim of this project was to strengthen Japanese Canadian relations by planting cherry trees in visible locations across Ontario. Between 2000 and 2012, 3,082 trees were planted at 58 locations. The trees on Centre Island were planted in 2011.

below: Catkins from a red alder tree. They almost look like raspberries packed tight together.

below: An early family of Canada geese.

below: The pier at the eastern end of Wards Island is bad need of repair. To the right is the entry into the Eastern Channel (or Eastern Gap).

below: Looking over to Algonquin Island. Once upon a time this island was just a sandbar.

There were many reporters with their cameramen at the site this morning. It was rumoured that Mayor John Tory was coming. I had an appointment, which is why I was in the area, so I couldn’t stay. As it turned out, both Tory and Kathleen Wynne (Ontario Premier) paid the memorial wall a visit.